2016 Q7 for review (terminal station signalling)

[Alan Beavers]

Another q. for review, also has sample answer on IRSE (attached also) but very different to mine again: I omitted permissive facilities as the question was 'trains must stop close to buffer, what are the facilities and risks'. I suppose you take poetic licence and assume the reason for that is to fit a second train behind, however the sample answer did not qualify it with that.
Question was done under exam conditions in pen - almost two sides of lined A4, then typed up word for word.
Regards
Alan

[Jerry1237]

Couple of suggestions/comments for you. Acronyms need to be defined before being used - the same example has TPWS in fill as an example.

b) as a suggestion: distractions (i.e passengers), dark, suddenly light when entering at night, curves, obstructions...

The answer asks for a signalling system to be selected. This then drives various parts of the answers. A system appears not to have been defined which makes d) difficult to answer.

[Alan Beavers]

Thanks, I thought I had defined the signalling in a)?
You might not have noticed it also said "UK mainline practice" above.

[Jerry1237]

The exams requires candidates to state assumptions and be explicit. 3 or 4 aspect MAS, with TPWS, AWS, ATO, ATP, ETCS L1, tripcocks... !?!?
Buffer stops lamps are not proven, can be red or white [to avoid confusion/cross-reading]; rules and route knowledge are what is used to determine stopping positions.

[PJW]

Another q. for review, also has sample answer on IRSE (attached also) but very different to mine again: I omitted permissive facilities as the question was 'trains must stop close to buffer, what are the facilities and risks'. I suppose you take poetic licence and assume the reason for that is to fit a second train behind, however the sample answer did not qualify it with that.
Question was done under exam conditions in pen - almost two sides of lined A4, then typed up word for word.
Regards
Alan

Alan,

I agree with you re the permissive; yes perhaps one could hope to extend the question to suggest that at such stations there might also be a higher than average incidence of permissive working, but personally I'd have kept that as minimum content and focus almost all effort on what was actually asked. 

I think two pages type written reflects 3.5 -4 pages of most people's handwriting and is a fair amount for 30mins. Hence I agree with Jerry; yours did need to be some 50% longer.  However the skeleton of what you had was good and I think you could have fleshed it out more.  Having said that I think you went to far relating to the practical difficulties experience with bufferstop OSS; not what the question was about and also rather more MOD5 than MOD3.  The truth is I am struggling to add much more in terms of the skeletal structure as you can tell from what follows.

Here is another person's attempt to which I responded in email as well as comments written on the answer submitted.  You'll see that I was struggling to advise how to get to be a fuller answer to be able to score the marks on offer- perhaps that does force one down the road of trying to justify how some comment pertinent to permissive working can be considered in scope of the question.  Clearly in those circumstances it would be worth doing in the exam, if you have exhausted other possibilities to obtain marks; probably I'd get the paper otherwise finished and then come back to add here, so if I were judged to have "gone off piste", I wouldn't actually have lost anything as consequence of using my time in that way.......


2016 Q7
 

1. Couldn’t think of much more than you put, so think I’d give [4/5]
   
   
2. You listed many things in this section, but some were not really focussed on the GREATER difficulty for a terminal platform at a terminal station compared to the average platform at a through station- some could have been justified as being different but you typically did not.  You had plenty and so there were amongst them some I’d count, but often you could have made the wording better to show a full understanding.  I am glad that you did “list reasons” as requested. I’d give [3/4] but note you could have got as many (or even full) marks by writing just 4 entries that really “hit the nail on the head”.  I think:
   1. No margin of error / length of train to fit / variable length platforms / variable length trains
   2. Complexity /many platforms / limited visibility on approach
   3. Distractions – from passengers on platform / thinking about shutting cab down and next working etc
   4. Rail conditions- length of time occupied by trains that might contaminate rail surface / added water and coolant spillages etc.
   
3. Struggling to think what the examiners wanted to award 8 marks, 
   NR provides very little and you covered that adequately.  Other than detecting collision with sliding buffer (and the defensive driving marks on platform edge I included earlier), I couldn’t think of what to add.  I’d therefore give [6/8] but this does seems generous for what you included- I do wonder what I am missing……In the exam if faced with this  I might feel worth noting some other things that could be done in an desperate attempt to get more of the marks available- for example explaining that although NR does not implement that I know how London Underground implement TETS controls actually to measure train speed and lower train stops just before train should reach their position is observing speed profile; may also mention the difference if ETCS were operative in the area, talking about the need for a release speed associated with odometry uncertainty etc.
   
4. Again I’d be worried regarding how to get the marks; I think you basically did as well as I would have done and overall it was a good presentation.  Some of it seemed to repeat what had been many addressed before, but I can’t think of much that is different to add.  In the exam I might have talked about regular training of drivers in cab-simulators, what could be done to hold passengers on the concourse of the station so that people wanting the train on its return journey are not crowded onto the platform when a train (which may be late) arrives in order to lower distraction, regular cleaning of the platform wells, avoiding the contamination in the first place etc.   I suppose I’d give [6/8].
   

 
Overall that would make 19/25 which would be a high Credit. 
HOWEVER: bit dubious about this; it seems to have been a too limited question. 
Perhaps there was no more to say and you were clever at spotting a question with easy marks; on the other hand perhaps this was really a question written from a London Underground perspective and using an NR example makes it hard to be able to do enough to gain the marks. 
Your answer was definitely a solid Pass (and probably a Credit), but it may well be that I have been over generous in scoring since can’t myself think how to answer significantly better from NR perspective; perhaps it should only be 3.5+3+5+5= 16.5/25 and this certainly  “feels” more right for the content.

Lesson here is that not one's railway may no provide the environmental context to enable you to answer all elements of a question; so something to think about when undertaking question selection.  Just a less extreme case of someone from London Underground which has I believe one "real" level crossing (and that not over a public road but within a depot); even if the candidate knew everything that there was to be known about it they may well not have the context experience to answer the question on the paper about hazards of crossings- yes there are some for that one for sure, but  probably too limited to be able to answer all the elements of the question.....


So bear that in mind- there may be a better question to select!